A Man Called Hero

The follow-up to Stormriders is based on an earlier comic by Ma Wing-Shing (a 150-part graphic novel, the most influential ever published in HK), but it minimises the sword'n sorcery aspects in an apparent effort to go beyond the earlier film. Instead it goes for an Ellis Island storyline about indentured Chinese labourers in the New World and the struggle to establish a New York Chinatown, with a brief prologue in China and a flashback to Japan to cover the mystic kung-fu and clan leadership bases. But the script makes little geographical, chronological or dramatic sense and the digitally effected fight scenes are the only real reason to watch, although the climactic duel on the Statue of Liberty is less impressively visualised than two scraps with ninja.